A Son of God — The Added Article
The Teaching
The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shown you; for which of these do you stone me? They answered, For a good work we stone you not, but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? — John 10:31–34
Commentary
The exclusivity of Western Christianity rests, to a surprising degree, on a single added word. The King James Bible has Jesus claim to be “the Son of God.” The Greek says “a son of God.” The definite article was supplied later, in translation, and with it the teaching narrowed from an invitation to a unique and untouchable claim.
In Hebrew and in Arabic, “son of” does not denote paternity. It denotes nature. To call a man a son of a bitch is to say he is bitchy. A son of God is one of the divine nature. When the crowd charges blasphemy, Jesus does not double down on a unique status. He quotes the eighty-second Psalm back at them: you are gods. He is pointing at them, not away from them.
Read this way, “I and the Father are one” stops being a door open to one person and becomes the recognition every realized tradition arrives at independently. Watts observed that the same statement that got a man stoned in Jerusalem would, in India, have been met with congratulations. The scandal was local. The recognition was not.
Themes
Connections 7
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Hinduism while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Travelled
Christianity reached Sufism by 700 CE. Early Muslim ascetics wore wool and learned from Christian monks, and early Sufi literature is full of meetings with them. The extent is argued.
Travelled
Christianity reached Gnosticism by 100 CE. The same milieu. Irenaeus wrote against the Gnostics (c. 180); the Gospel of Thomas, whose Gnostic character is itself disputed, shares sayings with the Gospels.
Travelled
Alan Watts read and drew on Christianity.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. No known exchange while either’s teachings took shape. The Buddha’s life later reached Christian Europe as the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat (10th–11th c.), and a Christian church in Tang China used Buddhist terms (Xi’an Stele, 781).